I’ve heard it said that there’s no such thing as bad press. I’m not sure Prince Andrew would agree, but there you go.
In a way, Paul certainly thought so. I’m reading through Philippians at the moment and right at the beginning Paul claims that some are preaching Christ to make trouble for him, but he doesn’t care as long as Jesus is being preached. I think that the translation ‘preach’ isn’t very helpful here, because it conjures up images of some kind of monologue to a crowd, much as what we expect to happen on a Sunday morning in church. It makes it sound like there are two rival groups of preachers, going around with indistinguishable messages but different motives.
The Greek word being used is keryssousin, which means ‘proclaiming’. It’s often translated ‘preach’, but I think in this case it might be better to leave it as ‘proclaim’. It makes more sense to me that some of Paul’s opponents, eager to keep this villain behind bars, were determined to keep reminding everyone of his catalogue of crimes. “He taught that Jesus was the Messiah! Can you believe it? Yes, that’s right, the Jesus who was crucified under Pontius Pilate…” In order to stir up anti-Paul feelings, they repeat his message. They proclaim the gospel. Some are doing so in order to support him, others are using it against him, but to Paul there’s no such thing as bad press.
Now, the ‘no such thing as bad press’ thing only really applies when your message is a) more important than your personal reputation and b) worth being shared. It gives me pause. Does what I am proclaiming, preaching, talking about, writing meet those two criteria? Would I, like Paul, be able to rejoice in bad press?
